Maybe audiences aren’t clamoring for a new version of Dracula from Luc Besson, the filmmaker known for polished extravagance. However, it has to be said: his richly designed love story with vampires displays creativity and style – and in all its Hammer-y cheesiness, I’m not sure I wouldn’t prefer over the recent, stately interpretation by Robert Eggers of Nosferatu. There are some very bizarre touches, like a particular moment that seems to depict a territorial boundary between France and Romania.
Christoph Waltz as a Humorously Exhausted Vampire-Hunting Priest
Christoph Waltz portrays a humorous yet burdened man of the church pursuing the undead – it’s surprising he never took on this character previously – who finds himself in Paris in 1889 during the centennial of the French Revolution. Likewise present is the sinister Dracula, enacted by the body-horror veteran Caleb Landry Jones speaking in a twisted regional dialect evoking Steve Carell’s Gru of the Despicable Me series. This character that he too was born to take on.
The Narrative: A Saga of Heartbreak
Here’s the premise: the count has traveled ceaselessly the globe in sorrow over four centuries since he became undead, a punishment for his faithless sorrow over the death of his beloved Elisabeta (a first film part for Zoë Bleu, Rosanna Arquette’s child). Dracula has looked tirelessly for a lady who would be the rebirth of his lost love. By cruel fate, the chosen woman proves to be Mina (portrayed once more by Bleu), the demure fiancee of the count’s timid estate manager, Jonathan Harker (Ewens Abid), who just traveled to Dracula’s fortress to review his land assets and whose miniature portrait of the winsome Mina drew the vampire’s attention.
Besson’s Handling and Humorous Style
Besson arranges Dracula’s flashback sequence of global roaming wearing flamboyant outfits skillfully, and he is not above giving us funny bits in the style of Mel Brooks – for example the vampire’s constant unsuccessful tries to kill himself after Elisabeta’s death, along with comical sequences that result after Dracula applies to himself in a certain perfume in 18th-century Florence, that renders him unavoidably attractive to females. Ridiculous and watchable.
Dracula can be streamed online from 1 December and in disc format from December 22nd. It screens in Australian cinemas from 5 February 2026.
